"Still Dancing in Her Dreams." That was the title, and so I read, unprepared, this story about Liu Yan, 26, who was paralyzed in an accident just prior to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. According to New York Times reporter David Barboza, Ms. Liu had been China's leading classical dancer, a woman of such extraordinary grace, extension, and soul that she had earned the only solo performance in the extravagant, theatrical Zhang Yimou show. It was to last six minutes. It was to have been called "Silk Road." She was rehearsing before 10,000 when, in Barboza's words, "she leapt toward a moving stage that malfunctioned, causing her to fall into a deep shaft and crash against a steel rod."
She woke in a hospital, with no use of her legs, her story unknown. She was asked not to speak of her fate; her family and witnesses were silenced, too. It would distract, officials felt, from the opening ceremonies, which she watched on a TV, in her hospital room.
Her arms still open to the wind. Her legs don't move.
I had been to Chanticleer, hours before, with a friend. We had seen a vase, its rooted limbs upreaching. We had spoken of its beauty, and I had thought of a dancer then—seen a dancer in the arcing, budded shafts. Now Liu Yan in my mind is that dancer—still a dancer, always a dancer, tragically caged now, as a dancer. These are the stories one cannot look past. The stories one can't fix, or mend.
That is really is a tragic story. Wow.
Beautiful photo. Such a sad story. Sadder because of the silencing.
That is so sad. I can't imagine what she must have felt.
What a sad and tragic story.
How horrifying; I can't even begin to imagine.
What a tragic story. I cannot imagine the horror of this for a dancer.
But we can hope, like she is. We can be glad for the grit she's showing - not taking the doctors words as established fact to which she bases the rest of her life.
Her story's not over.
I hated so much that this dancer, in addition to experiencing so much anguish from injury, was forced into a silence. May the world rally to her now.
And yes, Sherry: Always hope.
So unbelievably heartbreaking ...
Oh, how awful! That's terrible -- it breaks my heart to read it.
Beth, yes -being forced into silence, being pushed aside makes it all the worse. We still haven't figured out that the poor of health and financially poor should be attended to in honor and respect. The poor, those in need, are still outcasts or, at the very least, forgotten.